Gluster users - Jun 2010 - Netboot / PXE-Boot from glusterfs?

Hello,

I am just looking around for a cheap, flexible and redundant 
SAN-Solution and started reading about glusterfs.
my network is based on gigabit-ethernet and i have some 16 servers being 
connected via infiniband.
After reading some documentation I have a few questions and hopefully 
someone could help me with this:

What I need is a SAN/Fileserver Solution that:

- enables (diskless) Linux-Clients to boot over the network (debian, 
some "real servers", some virtual ones)
Is this possible with glusterfs? Has anybody tried it? I understand it 
is not that easy with a FUSE-filesystem, and there does not seem to be a 
out-of-the-box solution, but has anybody tried it, maybe building custom 
initrds?

- i need shared directories for many servers, glusterfs seems to be 
perfect for that.
Security is only possible on a per-server-basis, right?

- ideally, i could have a HA iscsi-cluster running on the same servers.

Could I just use the Gluster Storage Platform or would you recommend 
setting up my own cluster using debian? I understand i will not have 
iscsi with the gluster storage platform.
I'd be happy with a "black-box" like the storage platform, as long
as it
is stable, installed in a few minutes  and if I won't hit some limits in 
a few months that would make me reinstall everything.

I have 2 old fileservers (dual-opterons with 8GB of RAM and a bunch of 
SATA-disks, infiniband and GB-Ethernet) that I would use for glusterfs - 
at least for now. When I need more performance at a later point, could I 
just add two new servers, wait until all data has been synced to them 
and then remove the old ones? Does it make sense to leave the old ones 
in the cluster? would they slow down the r/w-throughput when my new 
servers are faster and have 15000rpm-sas-disks?

thanks,

Jan

On 06/17/2010 11:08 AM, Jan wrote:
> - enables (diskless) Linux-Clients to boot over the network (debian,
> some "real servers", some virtual ones)
> Is this possible with glusterfs? Has anybody tried it? I understand it
> is not that easy with a FUSE-filesystem, and there does not seem to be a
> out-of-the-box solution, but has anybody tried it, maybe building custom
> initrds?
That's not what Gluster is for, really.  Fundamentally, Gluster is a 
networked file system, and while it is highly malleable within that 
context, it's not supposed to do anything other than provide a networked 
file system.

If you want to do network boots you'll need to look into another 
solution to provide that functionality.  That said, in theory there's 
nothing stopping you from building Gluster into your initialisation 
image, then using it once your systems are booted and operational.
> Security is only possible on a per-server-basis, right?
 From Gluster's perspective uniquely, yes.


-- 
Daniel Maher <dma+gluster AT witbe DOT net>